Best of a bad bunch

Laminations

Anyway regardless of our disagreement on what constitutes good governance, you didn't answer my question.

Would you vote green regardless of the quality of person trying to deliver those ends?

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Laminations wrote: »

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Fair's fair, you haven't really addressed my point that I don't find Green policies describable as:

Fiddling with stag hunting and commercial vehicle tax while the country was circling the drain

I'm not sure you're really getting what I'm saying here. My view is that the country was already down the drain in 2007, but too drunk to realise it, and that what has been done since has been pretty much irrelevant to that fact - pretty much a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic so as to determine who went down first and who got the best view of the oncoming waves. By 2007 the tax base was already drastically narrowed, house prices were far into bubble territory, commercial property was even worse, debt levels were already massive, the banks were already insolvent and several times the size of the economy, competitiveness was non-existent, and the PS payroll was at unsustainable levels.

NAMA may not have been the best possible solution, the guarantee may not have been the best possible solution - but so what? You can't compare them to the crisis never having happened, and pin the blame on the government that was in power when it happened because of the contrast. The crisis happened because of the huge structural flaws in the Irish economy, which had been built up over the previous decade.

Laminations wrote: »

Would you vote green regardless of the quality of person trying to deliver those ends?

I wouldn't vote for Fianna Fáil if they promised me a Green agenda, no.

Permabear wrote:

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Green policies, however, were widely and actively disliked. When the Greens started trying to deliver them in government, that dislike focused itself on the Greens.

Permabear wrote:

Honestly, one doesn't have to "try to tar" the Greens with allegations that they supported Fianna Fáil. They did support Fianna Fáil—as their voting record and presence in government from June 2007 onward clearly shows. There is absolutely no doubt about that fact.

And it's not quite the same thing. People aren't saying that they remained in coalition with Fianna Fáil because Fianna Fáil hadn't broken the terms of the coalition agreement, and they voted for government policy because that's what you do in a coalition - they mean that the Greens preferred to collude with Fianna Fáil's agenda because they're fundamentally like Fianna Fáil.

As for a mandate to make decisions - every government has a mandate to make decisions in government, and to do so as long as it enjoys the confidence of the Dáil. It doesn't stop and say "ooh, wait, this is unexpected, we'd better have a general election" every time something new happens.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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kincsem

My reason for not accepting the Green Party is they are a niche party. They deal with environment issues, but largely ignore other concerns. We need strong financial management. The Green Party supported Fianna Fail but did little to manage the economy.

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm not sure over the last couple of years whether I've really seen justification for the idea that they were made a lot worse. As I've argued at various points, comparisons seem to be made with some notional case where nothing bad happened. If there was an easy way we could have saved most of the money that was spent, without it popping back up somewhere else, I haven't seen it. Any conceivable government in power in Ireland at the time of the bank crisis would have reacted similarly - had Fine Gael been in government the bank bailouts would now have their name quite unfairly attached to them.

My reason for not accepting the Green Party is they are a niche party. They deal with environment issues, but largely ignore other concerns. We need strong financial management. The Green Party supported Fianna Fail but did little to manage the economy.

Basically, yes. It's not that I don't care about whether Ireland could have saved €10 billion by picking a different type of paddle, but that in the grand scheme of things it's not my top priority. I don't expect my priorities to be everyone else's, but I do want my priorities represented in the Dáil - I don't want a government that regards the environment as a disposable asset in the battle to fix the economy, because one way or another we will get the economy back, but if the environment has been spent to make it that little bit quicker, we won't get that back. And without Greens in government, that's exactly what will happen, going on the past record of the Irish mainstream parties. It doesn't seem possible for most Irish politicians to see something green without seeing it as "greenfield".

Are you saying that such people are just wrong to feel angry, hurt, and betrayed?

To be honest, that depends on their priorities, and why they voted Green. I don't feel "angry, hurt, and betrayed", so my question is why do they? What did they expect from the Greens going into coalition as a junior partner with one of the mainstream Irish parties? Do they remember sitting through twenty years of feeling angry and betrayed as successive Irish governments treated the environment as a disposable asset in the service of the economy or political favours?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Let me put it to you another way - you, quite rightly, want an alternative government that you feel will make better economic decisions, because the current one made what you view as very bad ones.

While I also want that, I don't necessarily want it at the expense of a government that makes worse environmental decisions.

Priorities, you see.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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bleg

I'll be voting green, like most I was furious with them at the end of last year but they finally made the right decision. I do not agree with all of their policies bit the same can be said for all the others. What sets them apart for me is their realism. They're not making ridiculous commitments and their time in government has produced some progressive important policy changes (ones that really annoyed the dinosaurs in the dail.) They have brought fringe issues such as energy dependence, political reform, innovative agri food business and planning reform to the fore. These used to be solely green policies but are now mainstream. I think having s green voice in the dail is more important than having another protest vote independent. After green I will be continuing my preference to keep mattie mcgrath out.

Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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Fine Gael have some green window dressing, for exactly the same reasons other mainstream parties do - all the cool multinationals want to be green. Varadkar and Ring on the subject of the long-delayed implementation of the ban on turf-cutting on SSIs is somewhat more telling.

Mind you, the best green window-dressing is a Green party. We'll see - there are a lot of Greens who wouldn't touch coalition with Fine Gael with a bargepole, and more who think we should just sit out the next austerity government.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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Oh dear me no - the Greens are also susceptible to pointless window dressing, just not quite as much.

Permabear wrote: »

I'm sure there are plenty of Greens who don't want to touch FF or FG with a bargepole. Alas, unless something utterly extraordinary happens in Irish electoral politics, that means the Greens will never be in government again, because we have never had a government that did not include either FF or FG.

It's amazing how many people ignore that fact.

cordially,
Scofflaw

johno2

zig wrote: »

Agreed, lets not forget that despite the Greens promise in November that they would walk in January and there'd be an election, the only reason that it did happen in the end was because everything kicked off after Cowen and his game of golf, it was nothing to do with the previous arrangement. Otherwise the election looked like it was being dragged on into March, April and some even mentioned it could be May.

What they actually said was that they were going to get the finance bill published and passed through parliment and then pull out of government. The projected timeframe for that was sometime in January. That would have been possible if FF didn't have an internal crisis and put everything else on hold while they figured out who should lead the party. BTW that little internal crisis cost the country €50M/day, that's about €12 per person per day just to soothe Cowens ego. As it happens, the greens did pull out of government on 23 Jan, keeping their word. They can't control what other people say about the likely date for the election so I think it's silly to criticize them for that point. Personally I'd have prefered if they pulled out in November though.

johno

oppenheimer1

I have to admit Gormley has been very impressive in his speeches and debates of late. My opinion of him certainly has risen anyway.